FAMILY OUTING
Now you can send your kid to K-pop summer camp.
At the first K-pop summer camp taking place at Asia Society starting Monday, kids will be separated into pop acts to coordinate their stage outfits, craft fan banners and hone group choreography over five days.
It all comes together on Aug. 9, when the groups perform a set of K-pop songs for an audience made up of their parents and guardians.
K-pop Spectacular is the final week of Asia Society’s Explore Asia summer camp series. Other theme weeks have included manga comics, Asian cuisine and Japanese storytelling.
“We want them to be engaging and to be a way for kids to come in and be learning about different Asian cultures without realizing that they’re learning,” says Stephanie Todd Wong, who heads up the camp programming. “We want to create citizens of our community that are aware of the broader world.”
Each morning at K-pop camp, kids will warm up with games and competitions inspired by “Running Man,” a popular Korean variety show.
Throughout the day, they’ll explore the history of hanbok, a traditional form of Korean dress, with an origami project. At lunchtime, they’ll participate in kimchi tastings.
But, the main focus at camp, Wong says, is prepping for the performance. “Who doesn’t want to dance all day to K-pop?”
BTS and beyond
Professional choreographers from local Soundbox Dance Studios will lead the group in mastering three performances: one from the girls, one from the boys and a combination piece that serves as the finale.
Soundbox’s Calvin Eata says his team decided to kick off with gender group performances because the most recognizable K-pop acts are boy bands and girl bands.
No dance experience is needed to attend camp, so the kids will start by learning basic dance moves such as pas de bourrée and kick ball change, he says.
To create the medley of songs for each performance, Eata considered hits by Big Bang, BTS, GOT7, Astro, SNDS and I.O.I. that are “super popular and very danceable and high energy, so even if the audience doesn’t know the music, they can kind of get into it,” he says.
A trademark of K-pop is its catchy melodies and catchy dance moves that the audience can quickly learn and mimic, Eata says, “that make them feel part of the performance.”
Fan base
During dance breaks, campers will explore the fandom around K-pop, Wong says. To enhance their act, they’ll identify aesthetics or Irwin Wong / Washington Post
colors and decide how they can wear clothes they have at home to give them a distinct look on stage, she says.
They’ll decorate foam light sticks that are inspired by the pulsating sticks used by K-pop concertgoers. As groups, they’ll make banners and distribute the posters and glow sticks to the audience on Friday.
“It’s this great kind of evolution, watching them over the course of the week,” Wong says of campers, some of whom have never before performed in front of an audience. At performance-based camps, staffers see kids grow from nervous to excited, she says, “and how that all comes together in that live moment.”
“Everyone feels quite proud and happy by the end of the week.”
Exploring music
Teresa Chapman, an associate professor at the University of Houston who teaches dance, registered her daughter Tennyson Stodelle, 8, for K-pop camp after Tennyson discovered K-pop on YouTube and began dancing to videos at home.
Tennyson’s favorite K-pop groups are Monsta X and BTS and, lately, she’s beginning to show an interest in performing, Chapman says.
Chapman views summer day camps as a chance for her daughter to explore her varied interests. In recent weeks, Tennyson has participated in guitar lessons and an aerial-silks dance camp.
“I love being in a city like Houston where we have so many different options,” she says. “You can pretty much do anything in the summer with your kids that they show an interest in and see what sticks.”